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Mount Mercy College Bolsters Executive Management with ERP Solution

By Dian Schaffhauser

02/12/08

Iowa's Mount Mercy College has selected an integrated suite from SunGard Higher Education as its enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. In a recent statement, the campus said it will deploy SunGard's PowerCampus Unified Digital Campus (UDC) to help it achieve its vision of becoming a university by 2015.

PowerCampus UDC is a Microsoft-based administrative system for small and medium-sized schools to manage admissions, academic records, advancement, billing and cash receipts, financial aid, finance, human resources, and portal needs. By replacing its current solution with the PowerCampus UDC, Mount Mercy College said it hopes to gain simplicity and reduce the complexity of its administrative systems and services; improve access to information and increase the accuracy of data; and increase self-service functions to its constituents.

"We are already operating very much like a university," said Christopher Blake, president of the college. "In order to complete the transformation, however, we need better planned support for enrollment growth, and we must increase our freshmen enrollment. Achieving these goals requires access to more and better data and a stronger marketing approach. We believe the PowerCampus UDC will help us reach these goals."

The accessibility to data, including key performance indicators (KPIs), is expected to provide school executives with real-time intelligence on enrollment, advancement, registration, and other metrics regarding the performance of the institution. "The accessibility to data will help everyone across campus become more intelligent in decision making, and it will help us be more strategic in our communications to students and prospects," said Blake. "We believe the PowerCampus UDC meets the needs of the college as a whole, and it is affordable."

Mount Mercy College is a Catholic college in Cedar Rapids, Iowa with 1,500 students, providing student-focused baccalaureate and graduate education. Plans to open a second campus to accommodate its anticipated growth are under way.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a writer who covers technology and business for a number of publications. Contact her at dian@dischaffhauser.com.